Ideal Computer Machines

[Oranos]

Regardless of whether you agree with philosophy held by GNU and the likes, computers are tools. I don't think this is understood by a modest measure of population, especially Richard Stallman, even. Technology has "improved" because either money has been laid on the table for more shiny spoons, or people have decided to try making their own spoons in a rebellious manner. How often do we improve with honest care and sincere dedication, without nonsense? GNU doesn't like money and property (because you will go to hell otherwise?), as others can't get enough of it.

It's not about impressing customers enough to let the cash in, or oppositely: trying to do everything against money. Just do it good.

Why does this matter? Well, I've been looking over a large amount of pragmatic material. The majority of it seems to be OS related, and it just seems like this forum would ultimately be the best place to discuss my concerns. The first paragraph you read is meant to lay some ground for many of the problems and complications that are ignored. This effect seems to be present in a way like opposing religions who only care about what their own Bible says (ignorant of anyway it could ever be better or worse).

I feel like my programming is very limited by these culprits. The Windows, Linux and Mac systems all share very serious problems, along with their own unique quirks. I need an alternative that breaks this pattern.

This is the topic of "Ideal Machines".

I've always been fascinated by the potential beauty of a robust, adaptive and malleable module system. Recently, I've lead this thought beyond software and into hardware, also. For example, I've heard an idea about subcontracting for different hardware components until being competent of producing a proper (and cheaper) technology resembling the Microsoft Surface. Hmm.. what if this was a casual and easy task? Perhaps it could be incredibly easy to design and assemble very unique and specialized devices? Better: what if this didn't cause complications with software descriptions (being less device specific)? Working with technology could almost be entirely intuitive. Of course, this is a dream for many. But at least these dreams could become our reality, unlike the fixed and useless illusions between 'GNU freedom' and 'money loving software business.'

I guess all of this opinion I've ranted could be poorly-relative and hazy right now. But altogether, by my whole understanding -- it actually seems to be very connected and important. Sorry for that, I'll try to be slightly more relevant:

The UDI project has come to my interest here. I've read about some new work which has been considered with it. Maybe I'm not all the way caught up, but there were plans for a "UDI 2.0" which would use some sort of bytecode format to describe drivers? It appeared controversial among quite a lot of members here, but I see some greatness by this idea. If done right, it would certainly be a big step in the right direction. By the looks of it, we're drawing nearer to a massive revamp by the way important hardware works. Hardware architects must increase research for fundamentally new (alternative and different) structures which are capable of resolving/simplifying consistent challenges which are disabling largely better execution techniques. Over time, this will enable more progress towards my idealistic vision of computer machines and their utilization.

It's about time. Tell me your thoughts on all of this. For completeness's sake, here are some particular things you should add regards at:

1) If you see any potential by my ideas, what would you do with them? By your experience, what would this all really become? What might work? In other words: I have a very vague description of this. Besides my thoughts on UDI, what could be an effective starting point, and how?
2) What are specific results and consequences which may happen if these ideals are established?

Cheers

edit: I really hope you don't reflect on this like I'm a ****-weed. Some of this probably sounds very, uh.. stupid I guess.

[Combuster]

Hardware architects must increase research for fundamentally new (alternative and different) structures which are capable of resolving/simplifying consistent challenges which are disabling largely better execution techniques.

The problem is that commercial hardware will only provide that for which there's sufficient market to actually start producing things for. As such, we as hobbyist software developers have no control over it at all unless we somehow manage to get on apple's board of directors or equivalent.

And there you just got the pragmatics again.

Nevertheless, we do have some good ideas and interesting setups going around, and based on the points mentioned there's nothing really new. It's just really difficult to get a project to somewhat of a working state, especially to the point where it becomes actually worth something over the established operating systems. I've been in the business for quite a while and still haven't made anything I could consider worthy of a proper release. It'll take a lot of total effort on our part to make a difference. But in the end, every bit helps. Maybe your system will be the one that eventually cross the border of being a geektoy to become something mainstream.

I've heard an idea about subcontracting for different hardware components until being competent of producing a proper (and cheaper) technology resembling the Microsoft Surface. Hmm.. what if this was a casual and easy task?

It has become relatively casual already - you can basically go shopping for a day and have all the parts you need.

[Oranos]

The problem is that commercial hardware will only provide that for which there's sufficient market to actually start producing things for. As such, we as hobbyist software developers have no control over it at all unless we somehow manage to get on apple's board of directors or equivalent.

Well then we can be blunt with those bastards. Of course, Apple probably won't do anything good (besides marketing efforts) even if they had a few smart guys on the board. If anything, it would be more practical to start a dedicated venture. And a venture like this should require a massive amount of research before anyone gets bold. The worst thing that could happen is multiple, weaker venturing efforts. We must bring it as a single, unique, novel and powerful solution, even if it means gathering an uncomfortable amount of us together to get the research done. No fork projects. This has to be coordinated.

Nevertheless, we do have some good ideas and interesting setups going around, and based on the points mentioned there's nothing really new. It's just really difficult to get a project to somewhat of a working state, especially to the point where it becomes actually worth something over the established operating systems. I've been in the business for quite a while and still haven't made anything I could consider worthy of a proper release. It'll take a lot of total effort on our part to make a difference. But in the end, every bit helps. Maybe your system will be the one that eventually cross the border of being a geektoy to become something mainstream.

Well... Maybe we should have ice cream parties as a regular event here ? There's probably enough personal Q&A in this forum. After all, a forum should be open for more discussion rather than just "Help me with this problem I have." I will contribute to this later. For now I'd like our (or just my own?) concepts to be developed a little more. They'll need to be explored and considered first.

It has become relatively casual already - you can basically go shopping for a day and have all the parts you need.

Indeed. I guess it'd just be cool to have components that are manageable like Lego blocks. As if you could "transform" almost everything into anything. Yum, impossible versatility.
Anyway. After a little more abstract discussion here, it would be more productive to discuss practical issues and (almost) technical concepts before this topic becomes useless. Just move with a steady pace.

[Casm]

Regardless of whether you agree with philosophy held by GNU and the likes, computers are tools. I don't think this is understood by a modest measure of population, especially Richard Stallman, even. Technology has "improved" because either money has been laid on the table for more shiny spoons, or people have decided to try making their own spoons in a rebellious manner. How often do we improve with honest care and sincere dedication, without nonsense? GNU doesn't like money and property (because you will go to hell otherwise?), as others can't get enough of it.

It is just a matter of fact that, if you have got mega bucks to pour in, and can afford graphic designers and the like, what comes out the other end is likely to be better than something done on a shoestring.

[Oranos]

It is just a matter of fact that, if you have got mega bucks to pour in, and can afford graphic designers and the like, what comes out the other end is likely to be better than something done on a shoestring.

Nevertheless, they'll only make a brittle product which will immediately make them more money. Google, Microsoft and Apple. They're suckers for that. Ultimately, you're only right in a limited sense. It is just a matter of fact that, if you have enough talented, wise and considerate programmers, you can create a nightmare for these "mega" companies. This can be delivered by a focused venture, rather than the weakling ways of GNU.

edit: I'm not going to have this disagreement here. I've already considered these rationalities for quite a long time. Please read all of my things before pretending that I haven't already regarded your concerns. If you still think there are fundamental problems, shoot me a personal message. I'll highlight your thoughts in the topic, and keep them as manageable issues. But please refrain from unstructured argument. That would really clog this up. Thank you.

[cxzuk]

Im not sure i fully understand your post.. can you summarise a bit more?

Does this quote represent what your saying?

"There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way — and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay."

[Oranos]

Does this quote represent what your saying?

cxzuk, you may have split my arrow in half. Yes, it represents this concept better than my own words!

Some more information and research from myself seems needed. Alright, I'll begin preparing something more concrete.

[gerryg400]

I'm not going to have this disagreement here. I've already considered these rationalities for quite a long time. Please read all of my things before pretending that I haven't already regarded your concerns. If you still think there are fundamental problems, shoot me a personal message. I'll highlight your thoughts in the topic, and keep them as manageable issues. But please refrain from unstructured argument. That would really clog this up. Thank you.

If you have already considered all arguments and come up with a solution, what is the point of posting to the forum ? Simply start your project.

[Oranos]

If you have already considered all arguments and come up with a solution, what is the point of posting to the forum ? Simply start your project.

That was a really narrow minded response. Was I really that ambiguous, or are you just annoyed with me? Send me a Personal Message for this type of discussion. I am preparing a document, but it certainly won't contain any direct answers to this topic. Like the other guy, apparently you haven't read (or properly comprehended) my previous posts.

Hint: This must be a very strong team effort to go anywhere. I can't "simply start" the project myself. There are multiple layers to the design, which should involve a great amount of collaborative effort. You're at -1: being irrelevant (philosophy ).

I'm sorry if you believe I'm being narrow minded myself. But this topic should go on topic. You might think of me as an @$$-hole (I probably agree), but it seems necessary. I guess you can keep questioning the topic with doubt until I have more things ready to roll.

Cheers

[Chandra]

That was a really narrow minded response. Was I really that ambiguous, or are you just annoyed with me?

Actually you didn't give us enough room for response. One sided response is not going to help anyone in any project. You need to be able to collect any possible oppositions and for that you need to give an open space for comments. Nobody is going to PM you for any disapproval/disagreement against your thoughts. As you can see you already got few positive responses on the topic. Why not explore the negative ones? That is going to be for your own good.

Sorry if I sounded like an arrogant idiot, but I was just trying to help you to prevent further offenses.

Cheers!

[Combuster]

The worst thing that could happen is multiple, weaker venturing efforts. We must bring it as a single, unique, novel and powerful solution, even if it means gathering an uncomfortable amount of us together to get the research done. No fork projects. This has to be coordinated.

That was the most motivated speech of "Let's do a community project" I've heard in years. A shame things don't want to work that way, and the Beginner Mistakes page should briefly explain why. People, myself included, will reserve their own opinions on what's best because it needs not be the best for you (and usually leads to flamewars the moment one of our religious people joins in).

That said, you can keep bashing all the established forces all you want (and most people will agree with that to some extent), but there is not much we are going to do to fill in the design for you, even if you wanted that to happen. Instead, you should come with the questions and proposals you promised unless your goal is to keep this thread in its current sci-fi thought experiment state.

And yes, if something is worth it I will help where I can offer it best, but in total time most of it is spent on teaching people to actually become developers instead of programmers.

[Oranos]

Beginner Mistakes made its impression. I knew that would bring the topic down (it isn't supposed to be what you claim), which is why I started this relented attitude. I was trying very hard to make *something* slide into place. Of course you can't agree with my faulted attitude and I. What a stupid mistake. Half of me already knew it.

Anyhow. I'm sorry.

[DavidCooper]

Do you have a more detailed version of your vision to give people a better idea of whether they might share it and want to work with you on it? It sounds as if a large part of your idea is that different hardware components need to come with universal drivers so that they can be stuck together in any combination to make the device of any individual's dreams with minimal effort, just tying the lot together with a simple OS. The idea of UDI appears to have caught your eye as it has the potential to form part of that package, and all it would take would be for each hardware component manufacturer to write a UDI driver for it for your vision to become a reality.

There are difficulties with that, as UDI has its own requirements which may put restrictions on the design of the OS (though I don't know how tight any such restrictions may actually be - ideally you'd want all device drivers to work rather like the BIOS, but in 32-bit mode, allowing you get a set of drivers designed to run in memory locations that suit your OS and for them to work without needing any services from your OS). The other difficulty would be that this idea is probably going to rely on component manufacturers writing the drivers, and they aren't going to be keen to do that until your system's already become successful and is in widescale use.

The actual OS part of this is trivial, however, so it doesn't need you to have it all tied to a single OS project - it would suit many independently designed OSes. The way forward might be to start your own OS project or join an existing one which is compatible with your idea and which uses the programming language(s) you prefer, and then concentrate on writing device drivers for the most important pieces of hardware, giving priority to those manufacturers which are most open about their spec. You should probably look first at UDI in greater detail, and CDI while you're about it, and see if either of those fits sufficiently well with your ideals as it may save you from reinventing the wheel. If you don't like the way they work, you're then going to have to encourage people to join you in creating a third way of doing the same thing, and could take a long time to get going. Your whole project may also be wiped aside by developments in artificial intelligence long before it's finished, so you need to think very carefully about how much of your life you want to dedicate to it.

[Love4Boobies]

UDI outperforms most driver interfaces I've seen, such as EDI, CDI, and DDI, but it also takes more work to implement. Furthermore, the UDI environment was also designed so it could be implemented on top (although not preferrable) or in parallel of your native driver interface. It doesn't really put many restrictions on the OS design, as it was designed with portability in mind.

I was the one to propose UDI 2.0 but many people weren't happy with the idea. Hence, an UDI bytecode compiler ABI makes much more sense. Such an ABI would have three advantages over legacy ABIs: binary portability for drivers, the opportunity for certain platform-specific optimizations (e.g., SSE in video/audio drivers) without including a bajillion binary blubs in the driver package and even JIT optimizations (e.g., based on runtime profiling) done by the UDI environment, and better support for managed operating systems.

[DavidCooper]

It sounds as if my concerns about UDI possibly restricting the design of an OS may be totally misplaced, and certainly everything else I've heard about it leads me to think it is UDI that most people should be getting behind. It may be that UDI could become a bolt-on package to work as a modern (and much more advanced) BIOS replacement on machines which only boot using EFI, and the death of the BIOS might in itself trigger manufacturers into backing UDI once they no longer have to spend time on all the old legacy stuff.

Anyway, what I'd like to hear from Oranos is whether his idea goes anywhere beyond backing UDI and attacking (rightly for the most part) some of the big companies. If not, then the community project he's encouraging us all to join is UDI.